Three Cameras, One Oppo R11s

Oppo is one of the biggest brands you probably haven’t heard of, due to only being in New Zealand officially for less than a year so far. Globally it’s still hitting new markets but due to its massive success in China as a reliable inexpensive option, it’s already the 5th largest smartphone brand in the world.

The Oppo R11s is no exception on the reliability front. As a step up from last years R11, the R11s comes with a nice new display and weighing only 3 grams more than its predecessor it adds another half inch of full HD screen.

Notable features are the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone that you’ll never use, and a duel 20MP+16MP rear camera which makes shooting photos in darker environments easier. It also has a slot for dual sim cards, or one sim and a Micro-SD for more space. For people in a hurry, it comes with flash charging, meaning you can get about two hours of calling out of a five-minute charge.

an Oppo R11s, just hanging out in its natural environment, ya know?

Oppo hasn’t skimped on the selfie camera, matching the dual camera on the back with a single 20MP front-facing camera. I took the R11s to an outdoor Peroni event on the weekend and it handled the varying amounts of light admirably. For people who are more interested in selfies than anything else, the R11s is packed with some pretty intense beautification settings that does its best to give you the best skin possible.

Packed in with the R11s box is a set of headphones that look suspiciously like Airpods and a free phone case, which is something you don’t often see bundled directly with the units. While a little free plastic shell doesn’t seem like a big deal, it does feel like Oppo actually cares, and I appreciate the gesture.

Photo purportedly taken on the Oppo R11s, remember if you don’t have a million dollars in lighting equipment and a hot model, your photos will not look like this.

In terms of preloaded software and bloat, Oppo has taken the Pixel approach and stuck with just the basic Google apps which is good. At no point are you asked to log into some cringy branded accounts like you do when you first log onto a Samsung Galaxy.

My only comment about the software, which is for the most part vanilla Android, is that when I swipe away notifications I don’t want to have to press delete after swiping. It adds an entire extra key-press to something I’m doing a hundred times a day.

You can pick an R11s for $799 and for the price you get a good bang for your buck due to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM.

Would I recommend the R11s? If you’re fine with a 6.01” screen and are planning on taking plenty of photos, then I totally am.